


Steps Taken Together

by CatKing_Catkin



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Carlos is a Good Boyfriend, Cecil Is a Good Boyfriend, Cecil is Mostly Human, Developing Relationship, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, Haircuts, Implied Sexual Content, Love, M/M, Male Slash, Scientist Carlos (Welcome to Night Vale), Slash, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 18:56:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1789651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt: "It’s time for Carlos to get a haircut again. Not wanting yet another disastrous haircut to be inflicted on dear Carlos, Cecil volunteers to cut his hair instead. How nervous will he be? And how pleasant will it be for Carlos to have Cecil being the one to cut his hair?"</p><p>Doubts get exposed in this difficult, tumultuous time. Doubts get worked past, together, with the power of science and kissing. Cecil takes the plunge in this important step of their relationship, and Carlos patiently helps him take it. Milestones in a relationship can only be reached with the willingness, cooperation, trust, and love of both parties involved. Fortunately, Cecil and Carlos have all of that and more to spare for one another. </p><p>Imprecise canon point, but probably takes place shortly after "Lazy Day", when Carlos has it up to here with long hair in hot desert weather.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steps Taken Together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vyc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vyc/gifts).



> This prompt was provided by my good buddy, Vyc. Hopefully this satisfies her and all of you. For my first Night Vale fic in a while, I'm pretty proud of it. Even if the landscape of the canon has changed a bit since I last put anything up for you all, I hope you enjoy this little fic of mine.

Relationships were all about compromises and sacrifice.

That was what Carlos forcibly reminded himself of as he took a seat at The Designated Chair at the kitchen table. Just as Cecil had relented in allowing Carlos to hang up his picture of the Himalayas, and in allowing him to get a haircut at all, so Carlos knew he must compromise in this.

It wasn’t even as though there were any other barbers in Night Vale that Carlos knew of, after Tully had been exiled and his name banned from ever being spoken or even thought of again. All things considered, who else would he trust to wield a pair of blades this close to his head? At least Cecil’s was the abnormality Carlos had grown to be most familiar with in Night Vale.

So here he sat, ready and trying not to be nervous. Here Cecil stood, just behind him, babbling away nervously and adorably as he steeled himself for The Inevitable Moment. It was a moment neither of them really wanted to happen, although for their own different reasons, but it was a moment that must happen in any case.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Cecil said for the fifth time.

“Of course not, Cecil.” If nothing else, reassuring his boyfriend was distracting Carlos from his own nerves about the situation.

“Janice has cut my hair for years, and it looks fine. Doesn’t it?”

“It looks great, Cecil.” It did, but mostly in the sense that “chaotic, choppy mop” was a style that just inherently suited Cecil.

“Oh, that’s very kind of you, but it could never look as good as your perfect hair, Carlos.” Cecil, bless him, remembered to put the scissors down before he hugged Carlos from behind. They’d moved into a stage in their relationship where they could actually hold a conversation that wasn’t just Cecil praising Carlos’ perfection, and Carlos quite honestly liked it that way.

It seemed that his hair, however, would always be an exception. That wasn’t so bad, now that Cecil was at least capable of balancing out that exception with other boyfriend-type conversation topics. After all, even back when he’d lived the sort of life where the world made sense, Carlos had never really seen himself as being as hopelessly attractive as Cecil seemed to think he was. He certainly hadn’t thought that would change as he got older, as his hair started to go grey and crow’s feet crept in at the corners of his eyes. Cecil, as he did in so many other things, thought differently. “But! I will certainly do my best. Better than that careless jerk, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-On-Pain-of-Re-education.”

Carlos had never actually come out and said as much, because Cecil didn’t always need more encouragement, but he really hadn’t been all that happy with the haircut Tully had given him.

Carlos sometimes thought about how Night Vale was changing him. He sometimes wondered if it was for the better or worse. Then he remembered that Night Vale had let Cecil come into his life, and knew it could only be for the better.

“Are you ready for me to start?” Cecil asked.

Carlos picked up the towel set out carefully for him at the table and slung it around his shoulders. Otherwise, as he knew from so many past haircuts, the hairs would get into his collar and itch at him and there would be no chance of any more Science all day. “Go for it.”

Cecil went for it. He went for it hesitantly, at first. After all, while they’d talked about it, Carlos knew it was going to take more than one attempt to ease him into the idea of “ruining” Carlos’ hair, even if it was for the sake of Important Science. There were several fretful murmurs of “Oh, dear” and Carlos could feel the blade of the scissors shaking as Cecil moved them past his ear a couple of times.

“Is that short enough? That’s short enough, right?” Cecil asked after a few minutes, his voice so aggressively hopeful and bright that it of course wrapped right back around into nervous. His earlier bravado had obviously been spent on even getting to this point, and Carlos was proud of him for it.

Carlos still knew the answer to Cecil’s question even before he picked up the Designated Mirror from the table. He picked it up anyway. It was to confirm for both of them that no, no it wasn’t short enough. Carlos was tired of tying his hair back or risking burning it off in a Bunsen burner. Not least because he couldn’t imagine Cecil’s inconsolable misery if that should happen when they both could have prevented it.

“Can you take off a little more?” he asked carefully, setting the mirror down again and adjusting the towel around his shoulders. “Maybe just around the ears?”

He didn’t even need to look back at his boyfriend – he could _feel_ Cecil freeze up behind him. Carlos reached back and gathered up the hand not holding the scissors with easy familiarity, and felt Cecil unfreeze just a little even if it was a while before the normally-eloquent radio host could find his voice again. Carlos, however, had learned a lot about patience n Night Vale. He waited. He had insisted that they start this. The least he could do was help Cecil finish it.

“I don’t think I can,” Cecil finally said, in a very small voice. “Oh, Carlos, I didn’t think I’d even get this far. I think about cutting any more and I feel like I’m looking up at a mountain. Just the idea of leaving this glorious hair shorn any shorter at all is as impossible as a mountain, and what if I end up like Tully hosting a radio show for sand fleas, and…oh.”

This last came because Carlos had moved Cecil’s hand around just enough to kiss the back of it. Kissing was always a reliable and, okay, kind of fun way to make Cecil be quiet. Properly finding that out, there on the hood of his car beneath the lights above the Arby’s, had been a very good day. That particular finding still occupied its very own page in his notebook.

“Mountains exist in another reality on the other side of a chained up door. Scientifically speaking, somewhere out there is a reality that exists to accommodate every one of our choices and all the most impossible ideas. But I can’t believe that, even then, there could be a reality where, as we are now, you wouldn’t be the only person I would trust to do this, Cecil.”

Carlos had never been the most eloquent of men, except where Science was concerned. Ever since coming to Night Vale, however, and particularly ever since dating Cecil, he had learned that Science could apply to even more things than even he had ever dared dream of.

Cecil still remembered to put the scissors down before he hugged Carlos that time. They stayed down for a while, too, as a great deal of overjoyed kissing and the resulting silence prevailed over their apartment – their home.

When the haircut finally resumed, it resulted in Carlos’ hair being cut so enthusiastically short that he thought wryly, regarding it in the mirror, that they might have just been better served using a razor to start with.

That was fine, however. That was safer, really. What was important was that they’d taken this step together, come out the other side stronger for it, and not been driven to a life of madness and degradation out in the sand wastes. What was really important was the way Cecil’s eyes lit up when Carlos told him that he’d done a good job.

Then there was Cecil’s suggestion that Carlos take a quick shower to make sure that they’d cleared all the stray hairs off his skin and thus out of his clothes. Just so any stray hairs that might be there didn’t itch at him and distract him from his Important Science. Cecil further suggested that he join Carlos, just to make sure of the same and for the sake of saving water. Yes, they’d spread a towel over Carlo’s shoulders and on the floor around their feet, but it did pay to be sure.

Those were pretty important steps to take, too., and they sounded like very good suggestions to Carlos, indeed.


End file.
